Dull horror.

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2006)

28 Days Later... starts as three animal activists break into 'Cambridge Primate Research Center' & deliberately set loose some caged monkeys, unfortunately unknown to them these monkeys are infected with a highly contagious 'rage' virus which turns the carrier into a ravenous crazy red-eyed zombies... Jump forward '28 Days Later' & Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes up in a hospital bed from a coma, he discovers the hospital & central London completely deserted. Jim is attacked by some of the infected & is saved by Mark (Noah Huntley) & Selena (Naomie Harris) who inform Jim that the entire country has been overrun by infected people who do nothing but kill & spread the virus. Survival is hard & Mark is killed when he becomes infected, with just Jim & Selena left they meet a man named Frank (Brendan Gleeson) & his young daughter Hannah (Megan Burns) who are also having trouble surviving in London. While trying to listen to the radio they hear a message from a group of soldiers just outside Manchester, the four decide to try & find them & seek help & shelter...
This English French co-production was directed by Danny Boyle & I thought it was OK at best & excruciatingly dull at worst. The script by Alex Garland takes itself 100% seriously & is slow, isn't properly fleshed out & dull. The film felt like it was hours long & it took me three attempts to get through it over two days as it just wasn't holding my interest at all. I hated all the character's, I hated way it was shot, I hated the story & I hated the fact it rips off so many better horror films right down to individual scenes from the likes of The Day of the Trffids (1962) where Jim wakes up in hospital facing a post apocalyptic world, Dawn of the Dead (1978) with the shopping center bit & the zombie kid & Day of the Dead (1985) with the chained up zombie, there are loads more besides. Not enough information about the virus or zombie sis given, in fact we learn virtually nothing about either. The film failed to excite me on any level, I simply didn't care what happened which is why I wasn't bothered about seeing it in one go. For most of the film Jim is passive & rather static until the end when he suddenly turns into a bare chested superhero & takes out an entire army platoon on his own & avoids all the infected zombies running around everywhere, it's far too clichéd & is just a totally unconvincing change in his character. The happy 'Hollywood' ending is also hard to swallow, where exactly did that plane come from? It's only Britian that is infected? It states early in the film that the virus had spread to Paris & New York, if the rest of the world was still 'OK' I cannot believe for the life of me that a highly trained platoon of soldiers wouldn't have radio equipment to contact the outside world, I mean if my cheap mobile can call the opposite side of the world surely they had the equipment to radio for help or at least know that other countries were infection free. After the end credits had finished on the version I saw it said 'What If...' which turns out to be an alternative ending in which Selena & Hannah try to save Jim's life in a hospital but fail & just walk off, this is a slightly more realistic downbeat ending that some may prefer while other's may not. Having said that it's well made & it's watchable on a basic level but it could have been so much better.
Director Boyle does his best to ruin the thing, it was shot on a digital camera so it looks grubby & cheap while he totally messes up the horror scenes, why do directors use really fast cuts? You know the sort of thing, scenes which are just annoying hand-held jerky camera movements, a jumble of jump cuts & individual shots that last for less then a second which confuses, frustrates & doesn't allow the audience to see anything. A lot of films are guilty of it & I really don't know why, I don't know a single person who says they like this particular editing technique, not one so why filmmakers continue to use it in abundance I'll never know. Forget about any effective gore as it's blink & you'll miss it stuff because of the fast editing, the most you can make out is some spurting blood. The early scenes set in a deserted London have a certain effective eeriness to them but that's as good as 28 days Later... gets.
With a supposed budget of about $8,000,000 28 Days Later... is well made for what it is but it's not that stylish. The acting from a largely unknown cast is OK but I absolutely hated all the character's in the thing which made it impossible to like the film or care about them.
28 Days Later... was hugely disappointing, I was expecting a lot but I felt let down in every area. I will still give it a decent score as it's OK but there are just too many things about it I didn't like. Worth a watch but just don't expect a masterpiece.